Real ways to make money on social media sites

Social media is more than just a way to stay in touch with friends, family, co-workers, and people that you barely talk to from high school. It’s a great way to make some extra cash – or even a lot of cash.

Even though it’s a relatively new industry, there are already a number of ways to make money with social media. Every major social media outlet has in some way helped users turn their hobby into a business or turn their business into a bigger business.

We’ll be talking about how the top 4 social media sites can be used in your favor so that you will be making more money than you ever imagined by using everyone’s new favorite pastime – social media sites.

1. Facebook

Let’s start with where this all really began – Facebook (we’re not going to bother factoring MySpace into this equation). There are a lot of ways that you can make some good cash on Facebook, especially since there are literally hundreds of millions of users using Facebook, and using it regularly.

If you have a blog or website, you can promote it. And if you do affiliate marketing, you can promote that on Facebook too. If you are able to write your blog posts or descriptions to your affiliate marketing landing pages in such a way that you inspire the reader to go and visit your site, then you’ve well on your way to making good money. Remember to always write about what’s in it for the reader (i.e. 20% off such-and-such a product or “Want to know how to get a FREE IPAD2?”).

But the money making potential doesn’t stop there. There are now sites that work in conjunction with Facebook to help you make money. The “My Merch Store” app through Zazzle is one of those sites. Zazzle will allow you to create and design any product on their site, free of charge. Then, you can pop on to your Facebook and sell it. This will work for anyone who has a design background or who may want to sell products made by other artists, or you can try out Cafe Press and sell things through their online store.

Ether is an interesting way to make money on Facebook. This website will allow you to add an app to Facebook and you can then give advice to people over the phone. If you’re good at giving advice, you can make some money. While this probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, if you’re into music, check out MusicBlaster. You can create a music store right on Facebook and then sell music from BlastMyMusic. For every song sold, you make 5%.

2. Twitter

Here’s the next best tool for making money online: Twitter. Just as with Facebook, if you have a blog or a website, you have got to use Twitter to promote it. Every time you put up a blog post, write a catchy description and provide a “TinyURL” link back to your blog so people can check it out. This also works amazingly well for anyone who is doing any affiliate marketing. You can sign up with a number of affiliate sites (one of our favourites is Commission junction) and find a product that you really like and feel passionate about. Create blog posts about it. Create at least a couple of landing pages about it. Once that’s done, then you can promote it on Twitter and make a whole lot of money.

One thing that you will want to do to make sure that you make as much money possible is make sure that you build up your followers on Twitter. Having just your family and friends isn’t enough. You’ll have to use Twitter tools and searches to seek out people who might be interested in your products, and get them to follow you.

Once you have a large group of people following you, it’s then possible to have “sponsored tweets.” Sponsored tweets are those that advertisers will pay you to put out there because they know that you’ll be able to reach the target market or amount of people that they need to get in touch with.

3. Google+

Google+ isn’t so different from Facebook and Twitter in that it allows you to get a message out to a lot of people. The one nice thing about it, though, is that you can separate people into different “circles,” so you can really then target different people of different demographics with your messages and test which marketing messages worked best with who. It’s a great tool to use to really test the potential success of a social media marketing scheme.

You can create a group with Google+, similar to a Fan page on Facebook, for your company to further help spread the news about what’s new with your company, if there are new products and services, and also to maybe provide reviews of your products/services, coupons and discounts.

Alternatively, if you’re any good with programming, why not develop a Google+ application? If you think that something’s lacking on that social media site, then go right ahead and make an app that will make things easier. You can then submit your app to the Apple iOS store and the Android Market and see how many downloads you’ll get.

4. LinkedIn

Perhaps the best feature about LinkedIn is the fact that you can post any recommendations from your previous customers or colleagues about your business right to your LinkedIn business site (and we all know just how important testimonials and third party endorsements are!) LinkedIn gives you the chance to really build up your brand in a community that is quite similar to you. As LinkedIn is more about businesses connecting with other businesses, you’ll be among more like-minded people – and you may be able to pick their brains for more marketing ideas.

Another great thing about LinkedIn is that you can create “groups” where professionals can all come together and share thoughts and ideas. If you have a question or want to know of someone’s experience with something, you have a group of people who have “been there, done that.” They’ll be able to help guide your decisions and help you make your business more profitable than it has ever been before.

Here are 15 common ways people make money with social media.

1. Tantalize Customers With Your Product On Pinterest

Small businesses can benefit in big ways from getting users to “pin” photos of their items on to their Pinterest boards. Create an account, engage in the community by pinning other people’s photos and upload photos that entice people to buy your product.

3. Copywriting

Twitter and Facebook can be great ways to show off your language and grammar skills. Prove yourself to be adept in the language of your choice to get yourself hired to write for a living.

4. Editing

Editors in particular have found success marketing themselves on social media, since services like Twitter and Facebook are great proofs of concept for their skills with the written word

5. Manage Social Media

There are a lot of companies seeking someone to handle their social media presence. Sadly a fair share of those positions are internships, but there are also many paid opportunities out there. Search “social media” on job boards to find results in your area.

6. Comedy Writing

A lot of new comedians birthed their career on Twitter. 140 character jokes or funny insights can gain you a lot of attention, so if you’re a particularly clever wordsmith consider giving comedy a shot to make money with social media.

7. Creative Writing

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman broke ground with A Calendar of Tales, for which he asked his large Twitter following to submit questions and turned some of their answers into short stories. You can do something similar that involves interacting with your audience, or even serialize a whole novel or short story over many posts.

9. Monetize A YouTube Channel

Not only can you make money with social media, you can turn yourself into a phenomenon. Just ask Grace Helbig, who’s developed a large audience through the hilarious videos she posts every week. She makes a significant sum just off ad revenue from her YouTube channel.

10. Become An Amazon Affiliate

When you join Amazon’s Affiliate Program, any sales made from a link you provide to Amazon will net you a small percentage. Cultivate a following and promote specific items on your blog, then include an affiliate link to the item on Amazon so that when a follower purchases something you’ll get paid.

11. Promote Posts

Get your sales pitches in front of more eyeballs with promoted posts, available through almost any social media service. It’ll cost you a little cash, sure, but it could net you huge rewards.

12. Sell Your Art

Tumblr and Instagram (Tumblr especially) are great places to post original artwork and get a lot of responses and shares. If your art starts going viral, you can turn that interest into income by selling prints and other merchandise through an online store like Etsy or Big Cartel.

13. Sell Rights To Your Photos

If you take good enough photos, people will pay you to use them! Flickr is a popular place to view photos, and this WikiHow explains how to sell the photos you’ve posted there. You can also license them under Creative Commons, which won’t net you any money but will expose your photographs to a wider audience.

14. Demonstrate Your Musical Abilities On SoundCloud

SoundCloud is one of the best places to get your music noticed, and I’m not just talking about the near-impossible goal of becoming a rock star. If you know how to come up with a catchy jingle, you can post it on SoundCloud to get clients flocking to you to create music for their commercials, radio ads, etc.

15. Innovate

These are just the known ways to make money with social media. The field is so new that many more avenues are likely to open up in the future. Consider how you can utilize social media services to grow your career or even create a new one altogether!

Mike Volkmann is a writer and blogger from Germany. He writes contents on current blockchain, cryptocurrency, social media and WordPress. His posts and stories appeared across magazines and websites since 2008.